Boysenberry Pastry Blouse with Handmade Buttonholes

Description

This is a blouse I made from a vintage McCall’s 1980’s pattern. I’m a real sucker for this kimono sleeve look. I just LOVE it. I also had a thing for this dobby dot stuff when it came out (from Anna Maria Horner’s Dobby Dot Voiles). I love the colors these came in. And the voile fabric is just perfect for summery weather. I mean really, this pattern and this fabric = a match made in heaven. This blouse is also special as its donning some handmade buttonholes. There are six of these babies. And though they may not look like too much, they are. These were a major feat for me. I’ve done one handmade buttonhole on various garments, but never actually done a whole shirt front with them. These were….involved. They are very beautiful, albeit not perfect, but I am still an amateur. I will say that getting all the materials together for these buttonholes was interesting. There is nowhere around my neck of the woods that sells buttonhole twist or buttonhole gimp. I found some buttonhole twist online, however was not able to pick and choose the weight. For gimp I ended up using the buttonhole thread from Coats and Clarks.

Since I wanted these buttonholes to have bit of pop and zing, because they were handmade, I made them in a contrasting buttonhole twist. Adding the mustard colored buttons was just a bit of fun, you know. I got the idea of sewing the buttons with the “crow’s feet” threading from the book, The Sewing Bible. I seriously can’t recommend this book enough. There are great handmade details like this scattered all over in it.

For more details on the blouse visit my blog here and for more on the buttonholes visit here.

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